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How to set up email blasts

List-splitting is now live under People > Lists. Click on a list and you’ll see the button for splitting, where you can divide into even or percentage groupings.

Are you still planning to add email scheduling?

Patti, we do not have a Facebook widget. However, you could link to numerous signup pages on from other sites (such as a link in the nav bar) where people would be able to click through and sign up. You can have people select which email they want and tag them on the CRM side of your NationBuilder account using a drop-down in the signup page, or you can have different signup pages for different sites that tag people differently. On a signup page, you can only choose one tag. You could also modify a volunteer page, and have the volunteer activities be different newsletter signups and folks would get a check box and corresponding tag for each newsletter. It really all depends on how you want to structure it. If all you are looking for is an email tool, however, NationBuilder is designed to be a more holistic community organizing system.

Thanks, Adriel. Just to be sure I understand though – we have a couple of different websites (as well as Facebook) where we collect eNewsletter signups – and we have several different kinds of newsletters that you can sign up for (Advocacy emails, General newsletter, etc.). Would we ONLY be able to collect signups on through our Nationbuilder site? Would we be able to have people choose WHICH newsletters they want to receive?

Patti, yes, NationBuilder can replace Constant Contact and similar mail-only programs. It does include autoresponders for things like signups, donations, volunteer pledges, that kind of thing. It does not include website widgets, as NationBuilder integrates a full website with email signups and lots of other page types for organizing online.

Can a tool like NationBuilder replace ConstantContact for email newsletter communications. Does it include features like auto-responder (i.e. for Welcome Series) and e-newsletter sign up boxes that can be used across multiple websites?

Katie, happily that IS a feature of NationBuilder. Check out the “Recruiting” page type, and you can specify the whole site or the individual page you want folks to promote, give them their own tracking link for seeing signups and earning political capital, and give them sharing options in addition to email forwarding.

It would be awesome to be able to track email forwarding somehow. It seems like a lot of people just forward within their email client, but can we can create a way to forward, incentive it by making it really easy and then track it?

No, you cannot Facebook blast (or Twitter blast) from within NationBuilder. You can use Facebook’s messaging system to send reminders to people who have signed up for an event on Facebook, and within your events management page there is a link to do that.

When a facebook page is linked to a broadcaster, does an email blast from that broadcaster also send facebook messages to those on the distribution list that have facebook accounts but not email addresses identified? In other words, is there a way to facebook blast from within NB?

No you can’t send email to both supporters and prospects at the same time, there is more information on that here: http://nationbuilder.com/erikpaulson/email_both_prospects_and_supporters

The Recipients page seems to require either Supporters OR Prospects. Any way to send to a list that includes BOTH?

Yes, we’ll be adding both the ability to schedule email blasts, and a/b testing.

How about scheduling for future blasts?

Any plans to implement A/B testing in the Email tool?